IFTIT: Tennessee Vols vs. Chattanooga Mocs Preview (8/31/24)
It's (Finally) Football Time in Tennessee
Recently: Tennessee (#15 AP/#15 Coaches Poll) closed the 2023 season with a 35-0 rout of Iowa in the Citrus Bowl, capping off a 9-4 season—a disappointment compared to the 11-2 of 2022, but a rousing success compared to the vast majority of Tennessee seasons over the last decade-plus. The bowl game featured a ton of roster turnover, notably the debut of Nico Iamaleava as Tennessee’s starting QB.
Chattanooga (FCS #8 Coaches Poll) turned in a nice 2023, finishing 8-5 and falling to Furman in the second round of the FCS playoffs.
Previously on Vols vs. Mocs: Tennessee beat Chattanooga 45-0 in 2019 after UT started the season with losses to Georgia State and BYU. Feels like a lifetime ago. UT holds a 40-2-2 record all-time, with losses to the Mocs in 1905 and 1958. In the latter contest, Chattanooga fans tore down the goalposts in Neyland Stadium. Which, honestly, if they somehow found a way to win again Saturday, they can have them.
Five Factor Tracker
There are five factors that are predictive of a team’s success in college football (it’s science), and those factors will once again be tracked here week by week. This becomes more useful the longer the season goes, and obviously there’s nothing to track yet for 2024, so here’s a look back at Tennessee’s performance over the last three seasons under Josh Heupel, first on offense:
As a reminder, the Five Factors are
finishing drives (shown in the chart as scoring opportunities—drives that get inside the opponent 40—and points per opportunity),
efficiency (measured by success rate—getting 50% of yards to go on 1st down, 70% on 2nd down, and converting on 3rd/4th down),
explosiveness (average predicted points added on successful plays),
starting field position, and
turnovers (I use havoc rate—percentage of plays that are a sack, tackle for loss, pass breakup, or turnover—because it’s a super cool stat).
Obviously UT killed it in each of those metrics in 2022. Ninety-six scoring opportunities at nearly five points per opportunity is a frickin’ ton of points, and that 50%+ success rate is rarified air—only a handful of the most elite offenses each season hit that mark. There was a steep drop off in 2023, but if things go according to plan, the overall talent boost this offense is getting in 2024 should push numbers back closer to those 2022 levels.
Defensively, we can track the Five Factors, too:
Here you can see a general upward trend. This defense is always going to have to deal with giving up scoring opportunities as a by-product of how fast the offense operates and the sheer number of drives they’ll be on the field for each game. The success rate and havoc rate were outstanding in 2023, and with James Pearce Jr., and the simple threat of James Pearce Jr. that offenses have to deal with in 2024, I’d expect the havoc rate to be excellent again.
The Two-Deep
The official two-deep Tennessee released this week was met with a good deal of criticism for the number of “ORs” sprinkled throughout. Very few positions had a settled starter, with RB having a comically-high number of FIVE players listed as potential starters. There’s a mixture of factors at player here-Josh Heupel has consistently disdained the depth chart while at Tennessee, rarely making adjustments to the chart once it’s released in week one. There’s also the theory that a published depth chart is bad for players in that it hurts their NIL earning power, or that it incentivizes jumping into the transfer portal. There’s also the fact that there’s simply a lot of competition at some of these spots, and many of them just might not be settled until after game one (or later).
Still, it seems pretty silly to think James Pearce Jr. and Dylan Sampson are not THE starter at their relative positions.
However, the official stance of this site is we like a good, OR-free two-deep. So there will be depth charts posted here in each preview post, usually with UT’s offense stacked against the opponent’s defense, and vice versa. This week it’s just the Vols:
Don’t let the lack of UTC depth chart fool you. There’s no intentional slight there. This is a talented Mocs roster. Chattanooga comes into the season as a top-10 FCS team, and veteran QB Chase Artopoeus is rated as the 6th-best QB in FCS football. The OL (which returns four starters) gave up zero sacks and just two TFLs in last season’s game against Alabama. In fact, the Mocs’ offensive line had the nation’s second highest pass blocking grade by Pro Football Focus—that’s among all schools, not just FCS. And WR Javin Whatley’s 54-yard catch-and-run at Alabama last November was the longest pass play allowed by the Tide in more than a year dating back to Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker’s 78-yard TD pass to Jalin Hyatt on Oct. 15, 2022.
Defensively, UTC has produced nine SoCon players of the year since 2009, and NG Marlon Taylor is expected to make it ten this year (he’s already preseason POY in the conference). Taylor recorded 7 TFL (5 sacks) in 2023, and the Mocs have tallied 103 sacks over the last three seasons.
Prediction
You’ll know a lot about the 2024 Vols by Saturday evening. In 2021, Tennessee beat Tennessee Tech 56-0. In 2022, it was UT Martin led to the slaughter, at 65-24 Vol win. A year ago, Austin Peay was supposed to be victim to the ritual slaughter. But Tennessee, though never in real danger of losing the game, saw the offense operate in fits and starts, never finding rhythm, and slouching to a 30-13 win. We didn’t want to believe it at the time, but the APSU game was a harbinger for what the 2023 offense would look like—often stalling, sputtering, and never quite feeling like the high-octane Vols of Heupel’s first two seasons.
This Mocs team is probably the most talented FCS school UT has faced in the Heupel era. But likewise, the Vols have what should be their most talented team in quite some time too. UTC did some of their most impressive work last year against Alabama, but they still lost 66-10. Even if this year’s Mocs put up a good fight, this game should be more about Tennessee than about Chattanooga. If UT struggles against the Mocs (like they did against Austin Peay a year ago), then you’re probably looking at a season of growing pains. But if the Vols can operate smoothly and put up a big number, then we might be looking at a helluva year. I believe in the latter. Vols win 56-18.